


from unforgiveness to love to lend

by Acai



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam gets the flu like a frickin' CHUMP, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fever, Fluff, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Ronan Lynch Has Feelings, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Sickfic, man what a nerd, sick/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 18:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21360739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/pseuds/Acai
Summary: It's bound to happen, with his astounding lack of self care and unreasonably busy schedule; but at least Ronan is there.Or, Adam gets a bad case of the flu.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 7
Kudos: 253





	from unforgiveness to love to lend

**Author's Note:**

> i've triaged five hundred flu patients this week, so. sorry, adam, it's your turn. 
> 
> title from seasons (interlude) by st. beauty 
> 
> tumblr: 12am | insta/twt: czernzy | pillowfort: vine |

It started with Adam jolting awake.

In and of itself, this wasn’t an isolated event; Adam jolted awake just as often as he slowly came into awakeness. Alarms and nightmares were often the culprits. This time, though, when Adam jolted awake, he kicked his way out from under the covers and into the bathroom quickly enough that Ronan was still in the space between ‘awake’ and ‘asleep’ by the time the bathroom door closed. 

In that space, it took a few seconds of re-slumping into his pillow and starting to fall back asleep to comprehend that the action was un-Adam-like. When the thought registered, Ronan shifted to sit up. 

“Okay?” He called. 

The reply was a disgruntled thud. Ronan wormed his way out of the blankets. He knocked twice on the bathroom door, waited for a moment, and then entered anyway when he didn’t get a response. 

Adam had his head tilted back to rest on the shower ledge, knees drawn up to his chest. He had a tired, wiry look to his face that Ronan wanted to make go away. 

“Okay?” Ronan asked again, more softly this time. “You look sick.”

“I’m not sick,” Adam said, despite the fact that his face was pale and his cheeks and nose were red. “I’m just  _ getting  _ sick.”

“You’re throwing up?”

“That’s synonymous, yes. Thank you, Sherlock.” Adam answered dryly. Ronan ignored him; Adam was always cranky when he was sick.

“Go back to bed. I’ll get the thermometer.”

Ronan offered a hand to Adam, and although Adam accepted it, he did it in a way that suggested the argument was far from over. Regardless, he went back to bed and sunk down into the blankets in a way that didn’t suggest much of a man with a fighting spirit in him at the moment. 

Adam rolled over on his stomach, gagged once, and turned pitifully onto his back again. He frowned up at Ronan.

“You’re sick,” Ronan said. Adam gagged threateningly over Ronan’s pillow, and Ronan took the hint and shut his mouth. He grabbed the trash bin and settled it on the side closest to Adam, then went to fetch the thermometer. 

In the kitchen, scattered evidence of Adam’s ill health were obvious now that Ronan was aware of the fact. A drawer sat three-quarters closed, something that Adam would have fixed and Ronan would have insisted didn’t need fixing. A can of lemon-lime soda sat half-empty on the table, something that Adam wouldn’t have drank unless he was sick (the carbonation always helped his throat; it always just made Ronan’s more sore when he got sick), and something that he would have finished in better health. He didn’t like the stickiness of soda, and he didn’t like the wasting of foods and drinks. The thermometer, which sat primly on the counter under the microwave, accused Adam most of all. 

Ronan plucked it up and, just to be a dick, grabbed ibuprofen and water, too.

By the time he nudged the bedroom door back open, Adam had wiggled so that he was laying on his back with his head lolling off the end of the bed, arms crossed over his face. 

Ronan flicked his forehead. “You already knew.”

“I didn’t  _ feel _ good. I’m not sick.” He peered up at Ronan through a crack in his arms-blockade and, at Ronan’s miffed look, said, “I don’t have a fever. Just a stomachache.”

Ronan jabbed the thermometer at him.

Adam accepted it, pressing the  _ on  _ button and popping it under his tongue. While it worked, Ronan twisted the cap off of the water bottle and shook a pill into his palm. He waited for the thermometer to beep, and then traded Adam.

Despite the signs, Adam had been right. He didn’t have a fever. Regardless, he  _ was  _ feeling unwell, and so Ronan mercilessly enforced the water and medicine. 

“Did you eat something bad?”

Adam shook his head, swallowing the pill without drinking any of the water. Ronan rolled his eyes.

“Do you feel better now? Maybe you just needed to be sick.”

“Stop talking,” Adam said with no bite. He held out one of his hands in a grabbing motion, and Ronan reluctantly accepted. “I’m fine. I just need to lay down.”

Ronan, ever agreeable, managed to climb back into bed without letting go of Adam’s hand. Adam let out a small puff of air and sunk back into Ronan’s chest. He pulled the quilt with him, lazily fixing it over the both of them with his free hand. Ronan’s hand found its way into Adam’s hair, making idle tracks through the messy curls. Adam’s eyes shut. 

“I’m not going to be able to fall asleep again,” Adam confessed, eyes staying shut. “I don’t feel good. But you can sleep.”

Ronan considered for a moment, but finally decided on grabbing at his phone from the nightstand in order to prop it up on the quilt. He turned on a show that Adam had been picking his way through lately. Even if Adam didn’t watch it, listening to the audio would be better than just staying awake by himself and feeling ill. 

Eventually, Ronan fell back asleep. He didn’t stay asleep.

When he woke up again, it was to Adam squirming free to go get sick again and the same episode of the show playing. 

Adam returned to bed, slotted his hand back into Ronan’s, and resumed his position--this time with his face pressing to Ronan’s chest, stubbornly not commenting on his persisting sickness. 

Ronan returned to running his fingers through Adam’s hair and pressed play on the show. 

At some point, he fell back asleep, and at some point, he woke up again to the same cause.

And so they continued on, Ronan waking up every twenty minutes to Adam retching again. But, Adam insisted, he didn’t have a fever, and it was the middle of the night. He could see a doctor in the morning when the doctor was open, _ Ronan. _

What started at eleven carried on to three and four in the morning, and by then Adam had swapped out  _ tired and wiry  _ for  _ exhausted and upset. _

By four and a quarter, Adam had admitted defeat and taken to lying on the bathroom floor rather than trekking to and from bed.

By five, Adam was patting Ronan awake with a mumbled, “I want to go to the doctor.” And then, when Ronan took a moment to wake up and process, a more forceful, “I want to go to the  _ doctor. _ ”

“Okay,” Ronan said, fumbling for his phone and waiting for his brain to start waking up. “S’okay?”

Adam sniffed, but he looked irritable rather than emotional. 

“I can’t fucking drink water,” Adam said, sounding thoroughly pissed off about this.

Ronan grabbed the first pair of pants that he found and tugged them on. His muscles tiredly protested being woken up so early. Adam disappeared back into the bathroom, and in the time it took him to finish retching and steadying himself, Ronan gathered his things and pulled on a coat.

“Holy fucking  _ shit,”  _ Adam hacked, and Ronan grabbed his coat, too. 

“Alright,” Ronan said, planting the coat around Adam’s shoulders and guided him away from the sink and towards the front door. He fished out the first pair of shoes he could find that looked easy to slip on, nudging them toward Adam’s feet. While Adam worked on toeing into the shoes without puking in their front hall, Ronan dug for a plastic bag. 

He pushed it into Adam’s waiting hands, giving the other a moment to drag in a breath of air before opening the front door. 

They took the elevator, something that Ronan always did and Adam rarely did, but even still the trek from the third floor apartment to Ronan’s car was a slow one. 

Adam--sturdy, proud, goddamn stubborn Adam--leaned into Ronan the whole way down, seeing how walking on his own was a process that currently seemed to drain him too much to be attempted for the sake of keeping pride. 

Ronan opened the BMW’s passenger door for Adam, and Adam slumped unceremoniously into the seat. 

“Seatbelt,” Ronan directed, sliding into his own seat and starting the car. 

Adam sent him a tired, grumpy frown. “I’m going to puke if I wear a seatbelt.”

“Then wear it loosely.” 

The look that Adam gave him said  _ hypocrite. _ Ronan made an unnecessarily large show of putting on his seatbelt. 

Ronan waited long enough to verify that Adam had listened before pulling out. He found a happy-medium speed of  _ only a little over the speed limit,  _ not wanting to take forever and a day to get to urgent care, but also not wanting Adam to puke on the BMW’s carpet. 

“Hey,” he said, prodding Adam softly. “Does it hurt?”

Adam made a noise like he’d nearly been asleep. Ronan prodded him again.

“Only sort of,” Adam mumbled, eyes still shut from where he was resting his head against the window. “It’s sore. It hurts when I get sick, though.”

“And the water?”

“If I drink anything, I’ll just throw up ten times more.” 

Ronan debated the logic of that. “Did you sleep at all?”

“I can’t. It hurts to try. Now be quiet,” Adam said, although he said it politely. 

Ronan, feeling merciful, decided to listen. And Adam, also feeling merciful, didn’t puke in the car.

He lasted the entire way to the Urgent Care parking lot, where he shoved the passenger door open and promptly threw up in the hospital bushes. 

“I don’t think this much puking is normal,” Ronan observed unhelpfully, standing with his hands tucked into his pockets. Adam gave him a withering look. 

He relied on Ronan again on the way into the Urgent Care waiting room. Adam sunk down into a chair, burrowing into his coat. Ronan spoke to the woman at the front desk, listing off Adam’s symptoms and information. 

She handed him a clipboard with paperwork, which Ronan retreated with to assume his place next to Adam. 

Adam was sitting still enough to have possibly been asleep, but his eyes were open and fixed on an empty spot on the wall in front of him, unfocused and distant. Ronan knocked their feet together. 

It took a moment, but Adam’s eyes slowly dragged from the wall to Ronan’s face. He blinked once, but his eyes weren’t any more focused after than they were before.

“What do you need?” Ronan asked, and Adam responded by shifting to rest his head against Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan let him be, getting to work on the paperwork he’d been given. 

Adam slept and Ronan filled out the sheets, doing his best to move as little as possible in order to let him stay asleep. Occasionally he’d cough, and Ronan would brace for him to have jostled himself awake, but somehow Adam managed to keep sleeping. 

He was allowed fifteen minutes of rest before a nurse appeared through the doors and called his name. Ronan did his best to wake Adam up gently, prodding his side and helping him get up. He coughed once, hard enough that Ronan thought he’d be sick again, but he only blinked heavily. 

The nurse led them to the triage room, where Adam slumped down into the vitals chair like they’d walked four miles instead of four halls. Probably it had felt like the prior, between not sleeping for a whole night and fighting off whatever sickness he had. 

Adam blankly refocused on a point on the wall while the nurse checked his temperature and let her take his blood pressure, but he curled his arm into his stomach when she released it to enter the numbers into the computer. She asked a few questions, and Ronan answered the ones that he could, but others required prodding Adam’s foot and asking a few times before they got a response. 

Ronan was glad when they were able to move from triage to treatment, where Adam didn’t hesitate to lay down on the bed and let out an impressive shiver despite his non-fever. Ronan peeled his coat off and draped it over him, which Adam acknowledged with a grunt. 

Adam stayed present long enough to look up when the door slid open and a different nurse appeared. 

“It’s a severe flu,” she informed them, scanning herself into the computer system and settling into her place. “Have you had your flu shot?”

“Yes,” Ronan said, at the same time that Adam mumbled, “no.” 

“You went to go get it,” Ronan reminded him. “When you got your annual.”

“She forgot to give it to me and I didn’t want to bother her,” Adam groaned, punctuating his sentence with a cough. 

Ronan frowned at him, but the nurse continued before he could comment. “The shot would have helped you out a bit here, but this one’s been going around lately anyway. We’ll keep you here for a few hours while we get you some fluids and give you something for the nausea, and then you should be able to go home.”

Adam’s eyes tracked her hands as she unlocked the cupboard next to the bed and began to pull out syringes and needles. 

Adam’s tolerance for touch and activity ran on a short clock, and Ronan knew that by now it was running low. By the end of a long school day or an hour at one of the Gansey family’s parties, Adam would vanish somewhere for a chunk of time to recharge. 

After a night of no sleep and a heavy sickness, Adam was probably more than ready to spend some time on his own in their dark, quiet room instead of two more hours of bright hospital lights and touching. He didn’t protest, looking too worn out, but he looked unhappy the entire time the nurse checked his arms, and then his hands, for a good vein. 

Adam only made a small noise when she finally settled on inserting the IV needle diagonally into his left hand. The needle was layered with tape and a plastic cover, and then Adam quietly tolerated her attaching the needle to the drip and reciting the medical information on the process. 

The second the door slid shut behind her, Adam melted into the bed with a cough.

“I want a drink,” he said.

“You can’t. That’s what the IV’s for.” 

Adam huffed, but settled once more a moment later. He stretched out his free hand to Ronan, who slotted their hands together easily. 

“Climb up,” Adam said. Ronan regarded the small hospital bed critically. “There’s room. It’s way too cold.” 

Ronan acquiesced, temporarily letting go of Adam’s hand to haul himself up onto the side of the bed that didn’t have the IV drip. He wrapped one arm behind Adam and settled the other around Adam’s chest so that he could still use his phone. Adam didn’t complain, seeming more than content to relax into the quasi-hug’s warmth. He let out a long breath and pressed his forehead to one of Ronan’s arms the way that he did when he had a headache, like he could press it away if he tried stubbornly enough. 

After a long night of being sick and groggy, the effects were starting to wear off on him. The underneaths of Adam’s eyes were gaining deep circles, and his eyes looked tired. His nose was red from running, cheeks too pink to be a healthy shade. Even his hair, usually too curly to run a brush through, looked exhausted and flat. 

“You should take better care of yourself,” Ronan said, and Adam just hummed in response, shutting his eyes. He wormed his hand free of Ronan’s just long enough to shift the coat that Ronan had draped over him to cover his face and block out the fluorescent lighting, and then their hands linked together again. 

Adam relaxed after that, face buried under Ronan’s jacket and pressing his face and body into Ronan’s. It took a grand total of two minutes for his breathing to even out and deepen. Ronan silently hoped that he’d be able to stay asleep until the IV drip was finished. 

He found ways to kill time dicking around on his phone. The nurse would occasionally return to bustle around the room and do things that Ronan didn’t care to understand, and Adam slept through it all. Ronan sent a brief text to Gansey, keeping him posted, and then turned his phone off so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the barrage of responses he’d get when Gansey woke up. He’d care later, probably, when Gansey texted Henry and Henry texted Blue and Blue texted Adam and Adam gave Ronan that look that said  _ I can tell people about my wellbeing on my own, thank you very much,  _ but for now Ronan very much did not care. 

The IV finished, Adam’s temperature was taken once more, and Ronan signed a discharge form.

Adam woke just long enough to make a halfhearted shuffle from the treatment room to the car, and then fell asleep without putting a seatbelt on. 

Ronan  _ could  _ wrestle it on himself. Really, he could. But what Adam didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and what Ronan didn’t do wouldn’t result in fifteen minutes of griping about a seatbelt the entire drive home. And, really, if anyone ever called Ronan responsible, that was their own fault. And, if Adam was asleep enough not to wake up the entire way that Ronan carried him back up to their flat, that wasn’t his business, either. 

/ / /

Adam woke up coughing, but this was decidedly better than waking up puking his guts out. He peeled his eyes open and squinted in Ronan’s direction before flopping an arm over his eyes.

“Are you thirsty?” Ronan asked. “The nurse said you can probably drink water now if you do it slowly.”

“Have I ever had anything to drink? Ever?” Adam asked, voice muffled through his arm. 

“Yes,” Ronan answered, nudging Adam’s arm out of the way and pressing a glass of water into his palm. And then, when Adam refused to sip and instead chugged, “slowly.” 

Adam put the glass back onto the nightstand, coughed once, and asked, “s’the flu?” 

Ronan shrugged. “Probably.”

The answer was acceptable, he supposed, because Adam dug his way back under the blankets. 

“Are you hungry?” Ronan asked. Adam made a negative-sounding noise from under the duvet, and so Ronan shuffled his way under the duvet with him. Adam shifted just enough to press himself into Ronan’s side, and the whole-body shiver that was currently encompassing him was probably to blame. Ronan counted it as progress. 

A year ago, Adam would have handled it by slapping an extra shift onto his schedule and turning prickly at any mention of a possibility that he was sick. An Adam who accepted help was one thing; an Adam who was willing to reach out and ask for it was another. 

If Ronan had to bet, he’d probably stay burrowed for the majority of the rest of the day. He’d always been short-fused when it came to stress, even more so (somehow) since he’d started to reluctantly deal with it. He’d asked, once, why Adam counted hiding under the duvet and watching stupid Hulu shows with Ronan as ‘recharging from people,’ to which Adam had answered,  _ you don’t count as people. _

He set an alarm on his phone for three hours from now to give Adam his medication and ferreted his way into the blankets, where Adam was waiting to press his face into the crook of Ronan’s neck. 

Ronan figured a long time ago that he’d be fine with it if they just stayed like that one of these times; just them and trash TV, where work and dreamthings were barred outside. 

/ / /

When Ronan’s phone alarm woke Adam up, he was up for good. 

Sleep still yanked at his eyes, but he wormed free of the blankets and fumbled for the glass he’d placed on the bedside table. He frowned when he found it empty, but waved Ronan off when he stuck out his hand to take it for a refill. 

“I’m tired of sleeping,”

“Oxymoron,” Ronan said, and got up to follow Adam down the stairs. “You should rest anyway.”

“I’ll rest on the couch. I want to shower first, though.”

Ronan neglected to comment, disagreeing silently but fully aware of the merciless grip Adam kept on his autonomy. 

The walk to the kitchen had Adam sliding into one of the chairs at the kitchen table for a breather, so Ronan took care of refilling the glass while Adam coughed and kicked at the legs of the table. He returned with the water, Adam’s medication, and a pair of scissors, which made Adam squint at him until Ronan gestured to the hospital bracelets that Adam still donned. 

Adam offered his arm up, taking the drink and pill with his free hand. When Ronan finished, he pushed free from the table, briefly twined his fingers with Ronan’s, and then vanished back into their room. 

He’d reappear eventually, but for now Ronan left him to his vanishings and instead contented himself with using a pen to draw all over his jeans in a way that always had Adam rolling his eyes, and in a way that reminded him of Adam, because Ronan’s brain tended to run on a reliable cycle of  _ Adam, Adam, Adam  _ with the occasional thought of something else, like the fact that they’d need to eventually fix the leg of the table that Opal had chewed up and that now wobbled when pressure was applied to the tabletop, or how he was  _ pretty sure  _ his missing blanket was at Monmouth even though Gansey absolutely-definitely-did-not-take-it-how-dare-you-Ronan. 

So he sat and ruined his jeans and thought of ways to fix the table leg until Adam returned, hair wet and yawning, and claimed a corner of the couch to curl up on. He looked fresher, crisper, which in a way made him look both more-and-less Adam all at once. Ronan took the couch cushion next to him, childishly moving Adam’s legs around until he could rest his head on them. Adam gave his head a single pat, coughed once, and then sneezed. 

“Thanks,” Ronan said, but didn’t move. 

Adam propped his feet up on the coffee table and dragged a blanket from off the top of the couch, maneuvering it so that it covered his legs without covering Ronan’s face. His shivers had receded to smaller, occasional occurrences.

Ronan would have to remember to take his temperature again at some point soon, but he left it as a problem for future-Ronan and allowed present-Ronan to stay where he was. Adam’s hand absently ran over Ronan’s head while he flicked through channels on the TV. They’d worry about dinner and responsibility later, when Ronan wasn’t so comfortable and Adam wasn’t the most relaxed he’d been in nearly twenty-four hours. For now, they were good where they were; the two of them and trash TV, where work and dreamthings were barred outside. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this one, go ahead and leave me a comment letting me know what you thought!
> 
> tumblr: 12am | insta/twt: czernzy | pillowfort: vine |


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